


you hold your course and your aim

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Coma, F/M, Fix-It, Fuck show canon, Gen, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-07-31 12:15:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20114953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: “I remember wine. And your skin. Your neck. You held me down.”“More. Tell me — tell me what I like.”





	you hold your course and your aim

**Author's Note:**

> written 04 august 2019.
> 
> title from Javert.

Day 0.

She finds him. Against the odds of chance and the voice of fear and experience that says _Everyone leaves me, everyone I love leaves me_ — she finds him.

The gold hand is missing. She almost goes to look for it and then laughs aloud: who needs a _hand? _She has Jaime.

And his eyes are shut and his head is bleeding slow but his chest moves a bit and his heart pushes against her hand, fierce and raw: _I am I am I am._

Day 1.  
Pod sees them, plodding slow back to the camp — she’d told him to wait and she didn’t really expect him to do it but he is no obstinent Jaime, he listened, he obeyed.

He shouts in recognition when he sees her and shouts again in disbelieving joy when he sees who the horse carries, tied to its back. “Is that —“

“Help me get him down.”

“He looks terrible,” says Pod. They have him undressed and gods, she hates to see him like this — sick again, wounded and bleeding and insensible again. Live, she told him. Live for revenge.

Now he’s gone and done his revenge, and she begins to think she should have told him something else.

His hair is red now. She’s afraid to wash it out, in case the wound opens, in case ...

“Has he woken up?” says Podrick. He’s making soup, stirring it over the fire. Probably it doesn’t need that much tending, probably he is keeping away from looking at her.

“No,” says Brienne. “He’s still asleep.”

Day 3.

They wash him again, more thoroughly. Pod helps, again, and he offers to do what he calls “his middle bits, ser”

but no. It’s fine.

It has to be fine.

She washes out his hair, too, finally, until the water runs clear. Lannister gold, he’d called it, laughing.

Grey threaded through it now; why hadn’t she noticed that before?

“Jaime?” she says to him. “Jaime, I’m here. It’s time to wake up.”

No response.

Day 5.

He spits up the soup she’s feeding him and mumbles something and she thinks — but no, that’s it.

She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. He’s alive, he is alive, and life means hope — isn’t that what her septa said?

“What will you do if he doesn’t wake?”

“He’ll wake, Podrick.”

“My lady —“

“I’m a knight.”

“What will you do if he doesn’t?”

Where there’s life ... “He’ll wake up,” says Brienne. “I know it.”

Day 11.

He wakes.

Neither one of them are paying attention. Pod is trying to learn knots and he keeps dropping the ends of the line and forgetting what bight means.

It’s only when Jaime clears his throat and says, hoarse, “I’m terribly hungry” that Brienne hears him and freezes like all the blood is drained from her body.

She didn’t really expect him to come back.

Podrick, bless him, takes over. He gives Jaime food and water and a blanket and shows him where they’ve dug a hole for the privvy — all while Brienne sits dumb and blind with tears.

They come back, Jaime and Podrick, one leaning a good bit on the other, his legs are stumbling and weak but he’s alive, Jaime is alive and awake and Brienne has to get her heart under control before she does something really embarrassing, like smile at him.

They sit back down.

She thanks Podrick, while staring at Jaime. Green eyes, I forgot how green they become sometimes, bright when he’s vexing and dark in the darkness, offering me wine, offering his body, asking what I want ...

She wants.

Jaime hasn’t really spoken. It’s the stone in her happiness.

When dark comes they give him more food — soup, bread — and he says Thank you and then, looking embarrassed, says: “But what are your names?”

Pod says something and stops, looking at Brienne. So this is her job to do.

“This is my squire, Podrick,” gesturing at him. “I’m ser Brienne of — of Tarth. Do you know who you are?” She doesn’t know what expression is on her face.

He shakes his head, but — “Jaime,” he says, after a moment. “My name is Jaime.”

Day 17.

He works hard and he doesn’t complain and he doesn’t really ask questions except Where does this go and What now, but he seems to remember ... enough. He can ride a horse and pick clean its feet, and she catches him teaching Pod the knots she taught him in Winterfell — the useful ones like rolling hitch, clove hitch, gawser. She taught him as much as she could remember. Sheepshank, catspaw, bowline; the ornamental monkey’s ball, diamond stop. Loveknot.

Most of them he couldn’t do with one hand, and he thought the whole thing was silly and stupid and When am I going to be on a ship anyway?

And here he was telling Pod what to do. He’d paid attention, that little shit, he’d told her lies to rile her up and —

There is no recognition in his eyes when he passes her that night and crawls into his own bedroll. _Goodnight, ser Brienne_ he says.

Goodnight Jaime.

Day 26.

“I knew you before,” he says.

Brienne only nods. She’s working on fixing a tricky bit of the padded tunic that goes beneath her armor.

“Can you tell me ... can you tell me about my hand? Do you know what happened?”

I was there. “Yes. I know.”

He looks at her, expectant. Jaime. “Was it during the war? Or an accident?”

“It was ... It was no accident.” How can she describe any of this? “We were traveling together, on a — a quest. Some men caught us. They took your hand.”

He is no more satisfied with this cleaned-up sanitary version of events than she would have been. “Why did they do it? Did you see? Couldn’t you ... nevermind.”

“I was tied.”

“Why?” he says again.

Her tongue is too thick and her throat is too dry and she can’t speak to this Jaime. She doesn’t know him.

But she can’t lie, either. “You did it to help me.”

And because you were arrogant and brave and wonderful and dear, and I thought you were a fool to be so bold, and then they held out your arm and I knew it for sure.

“Why would I do that? Who are you?”

“I was your friend.”

He doesn’t ask any more questions.

Day 29.

It’s hot as the inside of a frying pan, and Brienne has sent Pod to gather wood while she washes out her clothes and herself in a little slow-moving stream that empties into a proper pool awhile before it drains away.

It looks like Tarth, in a way.

So Brienne scrubs herself and her hair with sand from the bank and ducks under to rinse off once — twice.

“I knighted you.”

She submerges again to her neck. “Yes.”

He doesn’t seem to notice she’s naked — or else he was looking for so long that ... “You’re keeping something from me.”

“No.”

“You are. We weren’t friends, were we? Was that true? I remember ...”

“What do you remember?”

“I don’t remember being friends.”

She can’t answer this. “Jaime, I need to get out. Can you turn around?”

He does — slowly.

Day 47.

It’s dark, past midnight but not yet dawn, and someone is moving in the camp.

Brienne sits up.

Podrick is asleep and snoring, and Jaime — “Jaime?”

“I’m here.” He comes and sits by her bedroll. “It’s only me. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s fine.”

But he’s staring at her and it isn’t fine, her blood is beating between her legs and he says — “I dreamt of you.”

Is that right.

“I don’t think it was a dream. I think it happened. I remember,” he swallows, and for a second he is her Jaime again and her heart gives a painful beat but no no no it drops away — “I remember how warm you are.”

It’s a warm night. “Tell me more.”

“I remember wine. And your skin. Your neck. You held me down.”

“More. Tell me,” gods he is close, “tell me what I like.”

The faintest trace of a smile. “You like it slow. Painfully slow. You like ... slow.” He touches her face. “And me? What about me?”

His hand slides down her neck and rubs the pulse under her skin.

“You like everything.” It is true. She’d spent their second night asking him if this was good or this was better, kissed here or there, Jaime? and every word he said was _Yes_. Yes, please, Brienne.

“Almost right. Can I remind you?”

Brienne kisses him. And his hand slips down over her breast and she feels his mouth respond, and she doesn’t care if Pod hears them she doesn’t care, she pulls him in the blankets and kisses him, lets him touch her, until she is desperate and he’s whimpering, and it isn’t like how it was — it isn’t — it’s better and worse both. He pushes into her and cries out and she wraps her legs around him, holding him inside, holding on.

Stay.

At the end he slips out of her bed and kisses her and falls asleep at once, it seems like, while Brienne can only stay awake and stare at the slow-wheeling stars

that have watched her since birth and never once altered course, not even to take a closer look.

**Author's Note:**

> the heart making its old boast, _I am I am I am_ stolen from Sylvia Plath.
> 
> *
> 
> i still can’t tie a decent bowline.
> 
> *
> 
> this wouldn’t become what i wanted it to be. this is what it is.


End file.
